The duke handed him the folded note without a word of thanks, and the boy shuffled out, wishing that, just once, the duke would bother to tip for such feats of memory. He never did, but that was part of why Merchant Prince Whitefall charged the old cheapskate double for his rooms.
When the page was gone the duke stood alone at his table going over his plans step by step in his head. He did this often, for it gave him great pleasure to be thorough. Phelps would balk at having to print thousands of detailed posters and have them packed for distribution in one night, but a successful man seized opportunity when it arrived. The Court’s interest in Monpress had been the last uncontrollable element. If they were putting off their investigation thanks to this business in Mellinor, now was the time to strike. Accelerating the pace made him nervous, but he fought the feeling down. Surely this apprehension was merely a product of being in Zarin, where things were messy and chaotic. In a week, all his business here would be done and he’d be on his way back to Gaol, where everything was orderly, controlled, and perfect.
Just thinking about it brought a smile to his face, and he reached down for his teacup, newly refilled by the creeping teapot, which had already returned to its place on the tea service. Yes, he thought, walking over to the tall windows, sipping his tea as he watched Hern climb into an ostentatious carriage in the little courtyard below while, behind him, the page hurried toward the gates with the letter in his hands. Yes, things were going perfectly smoothly. If the printers did as they were paid to do, then tomorrow the net woven of everything he’d learned over years of following Monpress would finally be cast. All he had to do was sit back and wait for the thief to take the bait, and then even an element as chaotic as Eli Monpress would be drawn at last into predictable order.
The happiness of that thought carried him through the rest of his day, and if he drove particularly hard bargains in his meetings that afternoon, no one thought anything special of it. He was the Duke of Gaol, after all.
D
own the mountains from Slorn’s woods, where the ground began to level out into low hills and branching creeks, the city of Goin lay huddled between two muddy banks. Little more than an overgrown border outpost, Goin was claimed by two countries, neither of which bothered with it much, leaving the soggy dirt streets to the trappers and loggers who called it home. It was a rowdy, edge-of-nowhere outpost where the law, what there was of it, turned a blind eye to anything that wasn’t directed squarely at them, which was just how Eli liked it.
“Aren’t you glad I talked you out of making camp and coming down in the morning?” Eli said, strolling down the final half mile of rutted trail out of the mountains.
“I still don’t see why you wanted to come here at all,” Josef said. “I passed through here about two years ago chasing Met Skark, the assassin duelist. It was a mangy collection of lowlifes then too, and Met wasn’t nearly as good as his wanted posters made him out to be. Still,” he said, smiling warmly, “Goin did have some lively bar fights once the locals got drunk enough not to see the Heart, so it wasn’t a total waste.”
Eli looked at him sideways, eyeing the enormous wrapped hilt that poked up over Josef’s broad shoulders. “I don’t see how anyone could get that drunk.”
“The strained liquor they brew in the mountains is strong stuff.” Josef chuckled. “They don’t call it Northern Poison for nothing.”
Goin was surrounded by a high wall of split and sharpened logs set into the thick mud. The northern gate was closed when they reached it, but the guard door stood wide open.
“Sort of defeats the point of a gate in the first place,” Eli said, standing aside as Josef and Nico ducked through.
Josef shook his head. “Can’t say I blame them for not bothering.”
Eli sighed. The man had a point. Inside the wooden wall, the town was a maze of wood and stone buildings, dirt streets, flickering torches, filthy straw, burly, drunk men, and foul smells. Hardly a high-value target, even for the least discerning bandits.
“Civilization at last,” he mumbled, covering his face with his handkerchief. “This way.”
He led them deeper into the town, stepping over drunks and dodging fistfights, turning down blind alleys seemingly at random until he stopped in front of a small, run-down building. There was no sign, nothing to separate the building from the dozen other run-down buildings around it. Josef glared at it suspicously, but Eli smoothed his coat over his chest, checked his hair, then stepped forward to knock lightly on the rickety wooden door.
On the second knock, the door cracked open and a hand in a grubby leather glove shot out, palm up. With a flick of his fingers Eli produced a gold standard, which he dropped into the waiting hand. It must have been enough, for the door flew open and a burly man in a logger’s woolen shirt and leather pants welcomed them in.
“Sit down,” he said, motioning to a fur-covered bench. “I’ll get the broker.”
Eli smiled and sat. Josef, however, did not. He leaned on the wall by the door, arms crossed over his chest. Nico stayed right beside him, her eyes strangely luminous beneath the deep hood of her new coat.
The large man vanished through the little door at the rear of the building, leaving his guests alone in the tiny room, which was uncomfortably warm thanks to the red-hot stove in the corner and smelled like dust. A few moments later, the man came out again, this time trailed by a tall, thin woman in men’s trousers and a thick woolen coat, her graying hair pulled tight behind her head. She walked to a stool by the stove and sat down, looking Eli square in the eye as the large man took up position behind her.
“The fee is five standards a question,” she said.
“That’s a bit steep,” Eli said. “One is traditional.”
“Maybe in the city,” the woman sneered. “This far out, customers are few and far between. I have to eat. Besides, you don’t pay the doorman in gold if you’re bargain shopping. Five standards or get out.”
“Five standards then.” Eli smiled, flashing the gold in his hand. “But I expect to get what I pay for.”
“You won’t be disappointed,” the woman said as the man took Eli’s money. “I’m a fully initiated broker. You’ll get the best we have. Now, what’s your question?”
Eli leaned forward. “I need the location and owners of all the remaining Fenzetti blades.”
The woman frowned. “Fenzetti? You mean the swords?”
Eli nodded.
“A tough question.” The woman tapped her fingers against her knees. “Good for you I had you pay up front. Come back in one hour.”
“No worries.” Eli smiled. “We’ll wait here.”
Neither the woman nor her guard looked happy about that, but Eli was a paying customer now, so they said nothing. The woman stood up and disappeared into the back room. The man took up position by the door she’d gone through, watching Josef like a hawk.
“Well,” Eli said, fishing through his pockets, “no need to be unfriendly, Mr. Guard. How about joining us for a game?” He pulled out a deck of Daggerback cards. “Friendly wagers only, of course.”
The guard glowered and said nothing, but Eli was already dealing him a hand with a king placed invitingly faceup. The guard’s expression changed quickly at that, and he moved a little closer, picking up his cards. After winning the first five rounds, the guard had warmed up to them immensely. So much so, in fact, that he scarcely noticed his luck going steadily downhill after his initial streak. Eli kept things going, asking him innocent questions and distracting him from the cards in his hand, which only seemed to get worse as the rounds went on. To Josef, who was used to Eli’s fronts, it was clear that the thief’s attention was only half on the game. His real focus was the door the woman had disappeared behind and the strange sounds that filtered through the thick wood. The noise was hard to place. It sounded like a sea wind, or a storm gale, yet the torches outside the tiny, grimy window were steady, burning yellow and bright without so much as a flicker.
Almost exactly one hour later, by Josef’s reckoning, the door opened and the woman came back into the room. By that point, the guard had been losing for nearly forty minutes, and four of Eli’s five gold standards were back in the thief’s own pockets. The woman shot her guard a murderous look, and he jumped up from the bench, leaving his hand unplayed (a good thing, too: his pair of knights would never have beaten Eli’s three queens) as he dashed to his place behind her. Eli only grinned and gathered his cards, tucking them back into his pocket before he turned to hear his now greatly discounted answer.
With a sour expression, the woman flipped open a small, leather-bound notebook. “I was able to get the locations of eight Fenzetti blades,” she said. “You don’t look like the sort who’s trying to buy one, so I’ll skip over the part about how none of these are for sale. Of the eight I could locate, five are held by the Immortal Empress.”
Eli made a choking sound. “The Immortal Empress? Couldn’t you start with something in an easier location? Say, bottom of the sea?”
“You paid only for location and owner,” the woman said. “Them being impossible to get is your problem.”
“All right,” Eli said, sighing. “Well, that’s five out of the way. How about the other three?”
The woman ran her finger down the page. “One is owned by the King of Sketti.”
“Sketti, Sketti,” Eli mumbled, trying to remember. “That’s on the southern coast, right?”
“It’s an island, actually,” the woman said, nodding. “Large island in the south sea. Four months from Zarin by caravan, five by boat.”
Eli grimaced and motioned for her to continue.
The woman flipped to the next page in her book. “There’s rumored to be a Fenzetti dueling dagger in the great horde of Del Sem. It hasn’t been seen in eighty years, though, not since Rikard the Mad lived up to his name and started giving out his family’s treasure to anyone who promised to banish the demon he was convinced lived in his chest.”
Eli frowned. “So that one could be anywhere, really.”
The woman nodded and closed her book. “I’d say Sketti is your best option. Would you like to buy another question?”
“Not so fast,” Eli said. “You said there were eight known blades. You’ve only told us seven so far. Where’s the last one?”
“Oh,” the woman said. “That one might as well be at the bottom of the sea for all the chance you have of getting your hands on it. It’s currently held by the Duke of Gaol.”
“Gaol?” Eli whistled. “He’s supposed to be richer than most countries put together. Rules over a beautiful and boring little duchy like it’s his private playground, or so I’ve heard. Where does the impossible part come in?”
She gave him a look of disbelief. “Where have you been?”
She got up and walked over to a small wardrobe set against the corner. It looked like a simple coat closet, but when she opened it Eli saw it was full of papers, organized into wooden nooks with small, scribbled labels. She dug around for a moment and then returned carrying a rolled-up poster.
“I can’t believe you haven’t seen these. They’ve been plastering them up in every city, town, and waypost across the Council Kingdoms for the past week. The printing cost alone must have been a fortune.”
Eli took the poster from her and carefully unrolled it. It was very large, twice the size of the bounty posters and covered in splashy block printing surrounding an engraved illustration of the most formidable fortress Eli had ever seen.
“Edward di Fellbro,” he read aloud. “Duke of Gaol, Liegesworn of the Kingdom of Argo, so on and so forth.” He scanned down the enormous list of titles that always seemed to follow anyone important, looking for the actual announcement. “Ah,” he said. “Here we are. It’s an announcement for the duke’s new stronghold. Look here”—he motioned Josef and Nico over—“ ‘… this new, impenetrable fortress, a wonder of modern architecture and security built on impenetrable bedrock, was created to protect his lordship’s priceless family heirlooms, the famous treasures of Gaol.’ ”
Eli’s eyes flicked back and forth, his grin growing wider by the word. “Powers,” he cackled. “There’s three paragraphs alone on the thickness of the walls!”
“Mm,” the broker said, nodding. “It goes on like that the whole way through. People thought it was funny at first, him making such a big deal over it in places that didn’t even know there was a Duke of Gaol. Who advertises a fortress, anyhow? But the tune changed after rumors got round ’bout what he did to the first couple of thieves he caught. Cruel doesn’t begin to describe it. So, unless you’re Eli Monpress, I’d count this target out. No sword, Fenzetti or whatever, is worth that kind of suicide mission. Stick to Sketti.”
Eli nodded thoughtfully, rolling the poster back into a tube. “Can I keep this?”
“Sure.” The woman shrugged. “As I said, they’re everywhere. I’ll just get another.”
“Much obliged,” Eli said graciously, standing up. “Thank you for a very thorough answer, Miss Broker. I’ll make sure to recommend your services.”
The woman gave him a sharp look. “It’s customary to tip,” she said. “Especially considering how you managed to cheat my idiot here out of most of my fee.”
Eli gave her an innocent smile, but she arched an eyebrow. “I told you,” she said. “A girl has to eat, and if you won’t play fair by me, then I might be forced to write a letter to these sword owners.”